Iggy Azalea|Stops Bootleggers

LOS ANGELES (CN) – Recording star Iggy Azalea won a preliminary injunction stopping music companies from releasing songs she says a former boyfriend stole from her computer. Using her real name, Amethyst Kelly, the Australian singer claimed in Federal Court that her former boyfriend, Maurice Williams, “misappropriated the contents” of her personal computer and released songs and music videos of her work. Kelly says that Williams, a rapper who also goes by Hefe Wine, claims she signed a recording contract giving him and the recording companies with whom works the right to use her name, likeness and intellectual property. Kelly denies it, and sued Williams, Primco Management, et al. in a copyright and trademark complaint. U.S. District Judge Beverly R. O’Connell on Monday granted Kelly’s motion for a preliminary injunction, “to prevent Ms. Kelly from suffering irreparable harm.” According to the civil minutes of the case, Kelly “began a relationship” with Williams in 2008 when she was 17 and moved into his apartment in Houston, which she thought was vacant. Kelly says she moved to Atlanta in 2009, and Williams introduced her to Kareem Chapman, with whom she signed an agreement making Chapman her personal manager. Kelly claims that Williams kept the copy of the agreement without showing it to her and she never spoke to Chapman afterward. She claims that Williams told her in March 2009 that he’d downloaded all of the contents of her personal computer, including unreleased recordings of her songs, which she never completed or approved for commercial release. She says she did not authorize anyone to remix, alter or sample the recordings or use them or her lyrics in videos or for commercial uses. On July 24, 2014, Kelly says, Williams’s company, Wine Enterprises, Primco Management and others issued a news release announcing they had “secured the rights” to release a compilation of Kelly’s works as Iggy Azalea, titled “Inizio.” Kelly says that is a “bootleg” of her works that Williams downloaded years earlier. She says she sent a cease-and-desist letter to stop the release, but Primco and others claimed they had the rights to release the material. Kelly says Primco produced a “forged” agreement, which she claims Williams fabricated from her 2009 signed agreement with Chapman. In an amended complaint, Kelly says the document “contains telltale signees it is not genuine” and has “mismatched fonts” on the signature page, lacks substantive text and has paragraph numbers that are out of sequence, among other errors. The contact information on the document lists an attorney whom Kelly says she learned of only after she brought it to his attention. She claims he submitted a declaration supporting Kelly’s motion for preliminary injunction, saying he did not “negotiate, authorize, or even know of the existence of this agreement.” But Primco Management, Williams and others ignored her objections and announced a Sept. 30, 2014 release of the materials using the Iggy Azalea marks and Kelly’s name and likeness, according to the court minutes. Kelly sued on Sept. 17, 2014, seeking an injunction to stop copyright and trademark infringement, trademark dilution, misappropriation of right to publicity, conversion, and violations of California laws. Judge O’Connell granted the preliminary injunction on Monday.